The 2018 Annual Report of European Vegetation Survey published 2018–06–26

The Special Feature entitled “Vegetation Science and Habitats Directive”,
edited by Fabio Attorre, Sandro Pignatti, Francesco Spada, Laura Casella and
Emiliano Agrillo, was published in the journal Rendiconti Lincei, Scienze
Fisiche e Naturali, in June 2018 (https://link.springer.com/…/29/2/page/1).
It contains a series of papers based on selected presentations from the 25th
meeting of the European Vegetation Survey (Rome 2015) and other invited papers
on the topic. It contains 11 papers plus an editorial.

Publication of a report updating the French interpretation of 35 habitats of Community interest 2018–04–11

In 2014 the French Ministry of Ecology established a national working group
on the interpretation of habitats of Community interest (except marine
habitats). This group work on updating the interpretation of about a hundred
habitats of Community interest. A report (in French) presents its first
results: the updated interpretation of 35 habitats, mainly coastal and
freshwater. Link to the report: http://spn.mnhn.fr/…ars_2018.pdf.
Link to the news on the website of the French National Inventory of Natural
Heritage: https://inpn.mnhn.fr/…ommunautaire

Since 2002 the German Working Group on Vegetation Databases <http://www.hswt.de/person/
joerg‐ewald/ve­getationsdaten­banken.html> engages in making the vast
amount of plot data produced by vegetation scientists accessible to research and
application. Our 17th meeting to be held from 14th to 16th March 2018 at the
Friedrich‐Schi­ller‐Universi­ty Jena (Germany) will be dedicated to the
topic “Vegetation Databases and Detection of Environmental Change”.

EVS meeting 2018 website launched 2017–11–13

New officers of the European Vegetation Classification Committee (EVCC) 2017–10–16

Electronic elections of the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of the European
Vegetation Classification Committee (EVCC) took place from 30 September to
15 October 2017. A total of 47 members (out of 69 members of the EVCC)
voted. All the votes were in favour of electing the two proposed candidates,
Wolfgang Willnerr as the EVCC Secretary and Idoia Biurrun as the Deputy
Secretary. No vote was against.

Congratulations to Wolfgang and Idoia and good luck in steering the work of
the EVCC!

The final version of the EVCC Procedures, approved by the EVS Business
Meeting in Bilbao on 14 September 2017, is available at http://euroveg.org/…APPROVED.pdf.

Next EVS meetings 2017–10–13

The next EVS meetings will be:

2018 Wroclaw, Poland

2019 Madrid, Spain

2020 Roma, Italy

2021 Bratislava, Slovakia

EVS meeting 2018, Wroclaw, Poland 2017–10–05

The 27th meeting of European Vegetation Survey will be held in Wroclaw,
Poland, on 23–26 May 2018.

Boris Mikhailovich Mirkin died on 9 August 2017 2017–08–22

It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Professor Boris
Mikhailovich Mirkin at an age of 81. He was a great scientist – vegetation
ecologist who introduced the Braun-Blanquet method to the former Soviet Union
and influenced many colleagues both in Russia and other countries.

Revised proposal of the EuroVegChecklist update procedures 2017–08–07

Revised proposal has been prepared based on the discussion at the IAVS
Symposium in Palermo (June 2017) and comments received so far. The final version
will be approved at the EVS Meeting in Bilbao (September 2017)

It contains an Editorial and eight original research papers published between
2013 and 2017, which nicely illustrate not only the diversity of European
grasslands, but also the variety of approaches used for their study.

Interactive online application of EuroVegChecklist has been released 2017–03–31

An interactive online application of EuroVegChecklist, the standard
classification system of European vegetation (Mucina et al. 2016, Applied
Vegetation Science, Suppl. 1), has been developed by Stephan Hennekens. It
comprises the complete classification system with all information published in
the printed appendices and various data from the electronic appendices of the
original publication, including lists of indicator species of phytosociological
classes and lists of relevant literature for each class. The application also
makes it possible to post online comments on individual syntaxa.

European Red List of Habitats published 2017–01–25

For the first time, a comprehensive assessment of European habitats has been
carried out, providing a clear picture of the state of the 490 habitats in
35 countries across Europe, from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean Sea,
and in neighbouring coastal waters of the North Atlantic, Baltic, Mediterranean
and Black Seas. Over 300 experts have contributed their knowledge and expertise
to produce an assessment of the level of threat of European habitats. The
European Red List of Habitats was funded by the European Commission and
coordinated by a partnership formed by Wageningen Environmental Research
(Alterra), IUCN, NatureBureau and consultants Susan Gubbay and John Rodwell.

What they reveal is stark. Over a third of all land habitats are currently
under threat: more than three-quarters of bogs, over half of grassland habitats,
and almost half of our lakes, rivers and coasts. Forests, heaths and rocky
habitats have fared better but are still of great concern.

In all our neighbouring seas, mussel beds, seagrass beds and habitats in
estuaries are everywhere threatened. In the Mediterranean Sea, almost a third of
all habitats are at risk of collapse; in the North-East Atlantic, nearly a
quarter. Also of great concern is the large number of marine habitats about
which we still know too little, particularly in the Black Sea.

European habitats are declining in extent and quality for many reasons, and
many threats are having increasingly large impacts. Intensive farming and
abandonment of traditional grazing lands, drainage and pollution, invasion of
alien plants and animals, urbanisation and associated infrastructure development
all of these continue to pose dangers to terrestrial habitats. At sea, it is
pollution, nutrient enrichment, destructive fishing practices and coastal
defence and development that are most threatening. Some damaging effects of
climate change are already apparent in both marine and terrestrial systems and
are likely to worsen.

Together, these habitats form the rich tapestry of our many different
European landscapes and seascapes. They provide a home for many thousands of
plants and animals and provide important ecosystem services, such as protecting
soils, capturing carbon and helping alleviate global warming. These habitats can
yield valuable crops, sustain livestock, game and fish and provide places for
tourism and recreation. They offer inspiration and delight to all and are a
precious heritage for future generations.

The European Red List of Habitats provides an entirely new and all-embracing
tool to review commitments for protecting and restoring the land and seas of
Europe. It covers a much wider range of habitats than those legally protected
under the Habitats Directive and will help us measure progress towards the
targets of the EU2020 Biodiversity Strategy.

26th EVS Meeting, Bilbao, 13-16 September 2017 2016–12–14

The first comprehensive and critically revised classification of European vegetation types (EuroVegChecklist) has been published! 2016–12–05

After 15 years of work and compiling ~10,000 publi­cations, our team of
32 vegetation scientists from 16 countries led by Ladislav Mucina presents a
new classification system with 149 classes, 377 orders and 1298 alliances of
European vegetation in a special issue of the journal Applied Vegetation
Science. With support from International Association for Vegetation Science, the
special issue is open access. This new classification provides a solid basis for
nature conservation planning, monitoring and habitat protection.

Proposed revision of the EUNIS habitats classification 2016–05–23

As announced at the recent Rome meeting, a consultation on a proposed
revision of the forest, heath, scrub and tundra sections of the EUNIS habitats
classification, based on work by the EVS, has just started and the EEA would
welcome your comments. Please see

New EVS Steering Committee for 2016-2020 elected 2016–04–09

The new Steering Committee of the EVS Working Group was elected on 7 April
2016 at the Annual Meeting in Rome. It includes (alphabetically): Fabio
Attorre, Italy, Andraž Čarni, Slovenia, Milan Chytrý, Czech Republic, Joop
Schaminée, The Netherlands, and John Rodwell, United Kingdom

The new Steering Committee selected Milan Chytrý as the Secretary and
appointed Emiliano Agrillo as an ex officio Membership Administrator.

The Symposium ‘Vegetation diversity in Latin America and Europe: advances
for studies and conservation’ organized by the Universidad of Santiago de
Compostela and the Geobotany Spanish Society (sgeobot.com), will be held from
the 12th to the 15th of July 2016 in Santiago de Compostela.

International Symposium “Vegetation and Nature Conservation” organized by
the French Society of Phytosociology, The French ministry of Ecology,
Sustainable Devolpment and Energy, the Departemental Council of Côtes-d'Armor
and ViVarmor Nature, will take place from 4 to 7th October 2016 in
Saint-Brieuc.

As we have announced a while ago, we will hold our next workshop in early
March 2016 in Potsdam. We warmly invite you to prepare your topical talks and
posters, which you will be able to submit online after 15 January (see below).
We will send a reminder and final call as soon as the website is opened.

Workshop Topics:

Since 2002 the German Working Group on Vegetation Databases <http://www.hswt.de/…nbanken.html>
engages in making the vast volume of plot data produced by vegetation scientists
accessible to research and application. Our 15th meeting to be held from 2nd to
4th March 2016 at the University of Potsdam (Germany) will be dedicated to
resurvey studies.

A major task of current ecological research is to detect and analyse
environmental and biotic change due to land use change, nitrogen deposition,
climate change and biological invasions. Preserving legacy vegetation data with
precise georeferences (permanent and semi-permanent plots) in databases allows
to revisit plots, resample their present species composition and compare it to
historical states. Beyond the plot level vegetation datasets provide insights
into beta-diversity and biotic homogenisation on the landscape scale. In large
databases several resurvey studies may be combined to detect more general trends
of vegetation change. Once detected, such trends can be attributed to ecological
mechanisms and environmental drivers by relating them to site factors and
species traits.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Kris Verheyen, University of Ghent Martin Diekmann, University of Bremen
Karsten Wesche, Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz

Call for Abstracts:

We invite presentations (talks and posters) focussing on questions and
methods relating to the design, performance, documentation, analysis and
interpretation of vegetation resurveys at different spatial scales, as well as
to the implementation of results in the management and conservation of
vegetation. Beyond the focal topic, more general contributions on other
technical or scientific advances in vegetation databanking are welcome. During
the workshop recent advances in relaunching the national vegetation portal
VegetWeb 2.0 <vegetweb.de> will be presented.

The workshop will be hosted by the Department of Biodiversity Research /
Systematic Botany of the University of Potsdam <http://www.uni-potsdam.de/index.php?…>
and is generously supported by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN)
and the Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU). Looking forward to your
contributions and to seeing you in Potsdam!

Thilo Heinken, Florian Jansen & Jörg Ewald

Professor Pierre Quézel (1926-2015) 2015–10–26

We are deeply saddened to announce that excellent French vegetation ecologist
Pierre Quézel passed away on 21 October 2015.

Invitation to join the new IAVS Vegetation Classification Working Group 2015–08–31

Dear EVS members,

We know that many of you are actively working and very interested in
vegetation classification. If you should belong to this group, please read the
following:

At the IAVS Symposium in Brno there was a well-attended meeting of
participants interested in vegetation classification (~60), highlighting that
this is a timely topic within our association. The participants agreed that we
should re-organise the former informal structure of a mailing list (together
with a Special Committee of the last IAVS Governing Board, comprised of very few
members and whose terms of duty terminated in Brno) into a formal Working Group
within IAVS. This will give all IAVS members (and also non-members) equal
opportunities to participate in forthcoming activities and to influence their
outcomes, but will also provide our Working Group with access to financial and
organisational support from IAVS.

The Bylaws available at http://euroveg.org/…approved.pdf
have been developed by us and approved (after some smaller modifications) by
eight founding members of the Working Group, who are Jorge Capelo, Milan
Chytrý, Miquel De Cáceres, Jürgen Dengler, Scott Franklin, Francois Gillet,
Pavel Krestov and Robert K. Peet. If you are interested in vegetation
classification at any spatial or organisational scale, particularly the
underlying methodologies, and you agree with the Bylaws, you are invited to join
the Working Group by sending an e-mail to the three ad-hoc coordinators (or,
after the election, to the Chair or Secretary). As you can see from the Bylaws,
membership in our group is free of charge and IAVS membership is not obligatory.
Please note that currently it is not possible to change the Bylaws; if you have
ideas for further modifications, Article 9 tells you the procedure that can be
followed (once the Steering Committee has been elected).

We plan to conduct the elections for the first Steering Committee (SC) during
September 2015 (see Article 5), i.e. during the first half of the month all
members can name candidates for the SC, while the electronic election itself
will take place in the second half of September. If you wish to participate in
the election, please take care that you have joined before nominations are
final. In case you will not be available during the first half of September,
feel free to send at any time nominations for SC members to us (candidates need
to be members of both the Working Group and the IAVS).

We now look forward to a successful development of our group that can
effectively tackle the five tasks we agreed upon in Brno within its new
organisational framework from October onwards.

Best regards,

The ad-hoc coordinators (please respond to all three of us because each of us
will be partly unavailable during the next weeks).

The 2015 EVS Annual Report has been published 2015–06–25

Future EVS Meetings 2015–06–05

25th EVS meeting will take place in Rome, Italy, on 6–9 April 2016, hosted
by Università di Roma “La Sapienza” (Emiliano Agrillo, Fabio Attorre, Laura
Casella, Francesco Spada and colleagues). Please note that the earlier announced
dates (13–16 April) had to be changed because of the Jubilee celebration
in Rome.

26th EVS meeting will be held in Bilbao, Spain, in spring 2017, hosted by
University of the Basque Country (Javier Loidi and colleagues).

27th EVS meeting will be held in Wrocław, Poland, in spring 2018, hosted by
University of Wrocław (Zygmunt Kącki and colleagues).

Synoptic tables of French vegetation online 2015–03–29

Message from Jan-Bernard Bouzillé: Synoptic tables of the Prodrome of French
vegetation are now available on the French Society of Phytosociology website (http://www.phytosocio.org). The synoptic
tables are downloadable from the “Prodrome” part of the website.

Travel grants for the EVS Meeting in Rennes 2015–01–07

Dear colleagues,

I hope to see many of you at the EVS Meeting in Rennes, France, on 4–8 May
2015 – https://evs2015.univ-rennes1.fr/index.php.
Please note that the deadline for registration, payment and abstract submission
is 28 February.

It is my pleasure to announce that the Governing Board of our mother
organization, International Association for Vegetation Science, allocated some
funds as financial support to attend the Rennes meeting for vegetation
scientists facing financial challenges. These grants can cover the costs of the
EVS Meeting attendance (travel, conference fee, excursion(s), accommodation) in
full or in part.

In the motivation letter, explain why you want to attend the EVS Meeting,
indicate the approximate amount of support (in euros) you ask for, and which
expenses you need to cover (travel, conference fee, excursion fee,
accommodation, or any combination of these). State clearly that you have no or
only partial financial support from your institution for attending the EVS
Meeting. Add a preliminary abstract of your talk or poster and a brief CV.

The applications will be handled by the Organizing Committee of the EVS
Meeting and the IAVS Global Sponsorship Committee (GSC), which will make all
decisions about financial support. The selection of grantees and the decision on
the amount of the individual travel grants will be based both on the personal
merits of the applicants (e.g. abstract quality, motivation, CV) and their needs
(e.g. income situation, travel costs to Rennes).

All the applicants will be informed about the decision by
20 February 2015.

All expenses of the awardees will be reimbursed after the Meeting through
the IAVS Secretariat based on the original receipts and tickets.

The 2014 EVS Annual Report has been published 2014–08–06

Public consultation on Article 17 assessments of Conservation Status of species and habitats of Community Interest 2014–05–30

Article 17 of the EU Habitats Directive requires the 28 Member States to
report to the European Commission every 6 years following an agreed format –
hence ‘Article 17 reporting’. The third report covers the period
2007–2006 and concerns 27 EU Member States (Croatia is not concerned by this
report given their recent accession to the EU).

A major part of the Article 17 report is an assessment of the conservation
status of all the habitats and species listed on the Annexes of the Directive
This assessment uses an agreed methodology based around the definition of
‘Favourable Conservation Status’ given in the Directive, The assessments
cover the entire area of each country and are not restricted to the Natura
2000 network.

From the country reports the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity
has produced assessments for each biogeographical region. A public consultation
will be held from 2 June to 7 July 2014 and the ETC/BD would welcome your
comments, particularly on the habitats. If you are interested please visit http://bd.eionet.europa.eu/…reports2012/ .

Results from the last reporting round were presented to the 2009 EVS meeting
and published in Annali di Botanica (Sipkova et al 2010).

Sipkova, Z., Balzer, S., Evans D. & Ssymank, A. (2010). Assessing the
conservation status of European Union habitats – results of the community
report with a case study of the German national report. Annali di Botanica 1:
19–37. http://annalidibotanica.uniroma1.it/…ew/9103/9043

Rosario Gavilán and Francesco Spada became new members of the EVS Steering Committee 2014–05–17

Following the amendment of the EVS By-laws approved in 2013, Rosario Gavilán
and Francesco Spada were elected as new members of the EVS Steering Committee on
the Business Meeting held in Ljubljana on 10 May 2014. Congratu­lations!

A report on habitat and vegetation mapping in Europe published 2014–03–03

Professor Jean-Marie Géhu (1930-2014) 2014–02–24

Crosswalks between the Prodrome of French vegetation and habitats of Community interest 2014–02–05

The Service du patrimoine naturel (a section of the National Museum of
Natural History of Paris) developed a crosswalk between phytosociological units
of the Prodrome of French vegetation (to the levels of the alliance and the
suballiance) and the habitats of Community interest (Annex I of the EU Habitats
Directive). This work was done in close collaboration with the conservatoires
botaniques nationaux and phytosociologists of the Société française de
phytosociologie. Around 800 correspondences are provided. 24% of the
371 alliances occurring in France are not of Community interest and 36% are
linked to a single habitat of Community interest. The Quercion ilicis alliance
has the largest number of correspondences: it is linked to 12 habitats!

The report is available on the website of the National Inventory of Natural
Heritage (INPN): http://inpn.mnhn.fr/…respondances#…
(Gaudillat, 2014). The crosswalk is also available as an Excel data table
(“TYPO_CRSP_PVF1­_HIC”).

Professor Władysław Matuszkiewicz (1921-2013) 2013–10–14

Professor Władysław Matuszkiewicz, a prominent Polish and European
vegetation scientist, Honorary Member of the International Association for
Vegetation Science, passed away on 11 October 2013. He is well-known
especially for his synthetic studies of Polish vegetation, including
“Przewodnik do oznaczania zbiorowisk roślinnych Polski” (Identification key
to Polish plant communities) and Map of potential natural vegetation of
Poland.

EVS Bylaws amended 2013–06–28

In the last meeting of European Vegetation Survey (EVS) in Vienna in May
2012, our Business Meeting approved the new EVS Bylaws, which defined, for the
first time, the EVS Steering Committee (SC). EVS is a truly international
working group and it is therefore crucial that also its SC is an international
body. Therefore the Bylaws approved in Vienna postulated a requirement that each
SC member is from a different European country. However, the subsequent vote in
Vienna showed that even with this rule, entire regions of Europe with many
people active in vegetation survey and highly diverse vegetation may be not
represented in the EVS SC, which is clearly undesirable with respect to the
EVS aims.

Therefore the EVS SC prepared a proposal for an amendment of the Bylaws,
which should ensure that three European geographic regions, defined by similar
languages, history and/or biogeography (Western-Central and North-western
Europe, Southern Europe and Eastern-Central and Eastern Europe), are represented
in the future EVS SCs. This amendment was approved at the EVS Business Meeting
in Rome on 10 April 2013 and by the Council meeting of the International
Association for Vegetation Science in Tartu on 27 June 2013.

The Prodrome of French vegetation published online 2013–06–12

The Prodrome of French vegetation published in 2004 is being extended to the
level of the association. For each class a phytosociological synthesis is
provided, in some cases at the European level. This synthesis contains a
description of the higher hierarchical units, synoptic tables and information
sheets for all associations known to occur in France. For each association
information is given on synonymy, nomenclatural type, characteristic species,
ecology, variations, distribution within France and correspondences with the
European habitat classifications (CORINE Biotopes, annex I of the Habitats
Directive, EUNIS). This work can lead to changes in the initial national
phytosociological system (Bardat et al., 2004). The synthesis of approximately
80 classes, corresponding to more than 2600 plant associations are expected to
be completed by the end of 2014. By the beginning of 2013, three quarters of
the classes have been finalised or are close to completion, with
764 description sheets validated or under correction. An additional
50 synthesis are expected by the end of 2013. The work is coordinated by the
Société française de Phytosociologie (SFP) in partnership with the Service du
patrimoine naturel (SPN) of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN)
and involves several partners including the Conservatoires botaniques nationaux
and vegetation scientists based elsewhere.

The results are being published in the Journal de botanique de la Société
botanique de France. The phytosociological classification and the
correspondences with European habitat classifications are held in databases by
the SPN according to specific data standards and made available via the
Inventaire national du Patrimoine naturel (National Inventory of Natural
Heritage, INPN). To date the following classes are available for download:
Agrostietea, Betulo-Alnetea, Cardaminetea, Charetea, Cisto-Lavanduletea,
Filipendulo-Convolvuletea, Lemnetea, Littorelletea, Nardetea, Nerio-Tamaricetea,
Oxycocco-Sphagnetea, Polygono-Poetea, Saginetea, Serapiadetea, Sisymbrietea.

Three other spreadsheets containing correspondences between plant
associations and European classifications (CORINE Biotopes, annex I of the
Habitats Directive, EUNIS) are also available. All this work will be updated
gradually.

This work will be very useful to many national programmes such as national
vegetation plot database (VegFrance), vegetation mapping of France (CARHAB) but
also for local practionners. At the European level, the data are available to
all plant ecologists interested in vegetation survey and might encourage
possible collaborations.

EVS history has been published 2013–04–06

Website of the Société Française de Phytosociologie 2013–04–03

Website of the French Society of Phytosociology is available at http://www.phytosocio.org/. The main
objective is to provide a place centralising news about our discipline and allow
easy access to the society. It also aims to be a place for information exchange
and sharing. It is also expected to publish a database of phytosociological data
that would allow to gather records on French vegetation.

Results of the Survey about Plot-based Vegetation Classification Methods were completed and published online 2013–03–22